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Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians: Material Culture and Race in Colonial Louisiana (Early American Studies)

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Description

Based on a sweeping range of archival, visual, and material evidence, Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians examines perceptions of Indians in French colonial Louisiana and demonstrates that material culture—especially dress—used to be central to the elaboration of discourses about race.

At the heart of France’s seventeenth-century plans for colonizing New France used to be a formal policy—Frenchification. Intended to turn Indians into Catholic subjects of the king, it also carried with it the belief that Indians could change into French through religion, language, and culture. This fluid and mutable conception of identity carried a risk: Even as Indians had the potential to change into French, the French could themselves be transformed into Indians. French officials had effectively admitted defeat of their policy by the point Louisiana became a province of New France in 1682. Nevertheless it used to be here, in Upper Louisiana, that proponents of French-Indian intermarriage after all claimed some success with Frenchification. For supporters, proof of the policy’s success lay within the appearance and material possessions of Indian wives and daughters of Frenchmen.

Through a sophisticated interdisciplinary solution to the material sources, Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians offers a distinctive and original reading of the contours and chronology of racialization in early The united states. Even as focused on Louisiana, the methodological model offered on this innovative book shows that dress can take center stage within the investigation of colonial societies—for the process of colonization used to be built on encounters mediated by appearance.

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